Paddleboard rentals at the end of the road in Port Renfrew. The owner needed customers to book online without handing a third-party marketplace a cut of every rental — and without ever promising the same board to two people.
What we built
A fast static site for the brochure, and a small booking application of its
own behind it at /book.
- Boards as one pool. Rentals are interchangeable, so availability is a counting problem rather than a calendar per board — simpler for customers, and simpler to get right.
- Double-booking prevented by design. A request holds nothing until the owner confirms it, and confirmation re-checks availability inside a single database transaction. There is no race to lose.
- The rules of the business, encoded. A turnaround buffer between rentals, a minimum lead time, a booking window, half-day through weekend rates and group pricing.
- An admin the owner actually uses — confirm requests, add phone bookings, black out dates, take a board out of service.
- Waivers captured at booking, with each booking’s source recorded.
Payment stays on arrival, the way the business already works.
How it’s built
Python and SQLite, about a thousand lines with a test suite, running in a memory-capped container on our managed platform with secure session cookies and transactional email. Small enough that the next developer can read all of it in an afternoon.
